It is not aptitude--a thing impossible to
ascertain without first putting it to the test and not always clearly
indicated in a man, for with regard to the majority of callings a man is
not born but made--it is not special aptitude, but rather social,
political, and customary reasons that determine a man's occupation. At
certain times and in certain countries it is caste and heredity; at
other times and in other places, the guild or corporation; in later
times machinery--in almost all cases necessity; liberty scarcely ever.
And the tragedy of it culminates in those occupations, pandering to
evil, in which the soul is sacrificed for the sake of the livelihood, in
which the workman works with the consciousness, not of the uselessness
merely, but of the social perversity, of his work, manufacturing the
poison that will kill him, the weapon, perchance, with which his
children will be murdered. This, and not the question of wages, is the
gravest problem.
I shall never forget a scene of which I was a witness that took place
on the banks of the river that flows through Bilbao, my native town. A
workman was hammering at something in a shipwright's yard, working
without putting his heart into his work, as if he lacked energy or
worked merely for the sake of getting a wage, when suddenly a woman's
voice was heard crying, "Help! help!" A child had fallen into the river.
Instantly the man was transformed.
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